Bruno Retailleau, president of the LR group in the Senate and senator from Vendée defended his party’s line on Islamism. He took the opportunity to castigate the ambiguity of Emmanuel Macron on the subject, just like that, in his opinion, of the far-right polemicist Éric Zemmour.
A compromise with Islamism. For Bruno Retailleau, president of the LR group in the Senate and senator from Vendée, the ambiguity of the current tenant of the Élysée vis-à-vis Islamism is beyond doubt. With the Republicans, he explains, “we had proposed the prohibition of ostentatious signs for school guides, it was refused; we proposed the prohibition of ostentatious signs during competitions organized by sports federations”, there also refused according to him. In the current quinquennium, the French strategy “to fight against Islamism and political Islam, it was the French Council of the Muslim faith”, recalling that the latter is in the process of collapsing.
The reason, according to him, is “quite simply because the CFCM was plagued by foreign influences”. At the microphone of Sonia Mabrouk, he affirmed that “institutionalizing an Islam of France is not the role of the State”: “The role of the State is to be secular, to guarantee neutrality”, he assures.
The veil, sign of the submission of the woman according to him
The accusations of ambiguity are also in both directions, the camp of Éric Zemmour accusing certain Republicans like Damien Abad or Jean-Christophe Lagarde of compromising with Islamism.
An ambiguity which also applies to Éric Zemmour according to the senator from Vendée, citing exchanges of SMS that the far-right polemicist would have had with Tariq Ramadan. And to recall that the latter “indicated that it was legitimate to stone a woman accused of adultery”. For Bruno Retailleau, “the veil is the sign of sexual apartheid, the sign of the submission of women”. And this is what differentiates him from Éric Zemmour: “I have never exchanged SMS and I will never do it with someone who compromises with Islamism”, he concluded.